Massage Therapy
by kizukatana
Summary: Naruto is working his way through college as a therapeutic masseuse at a high end resort. In general, he loves his job. But there is one client of his that is making him re-think his employment there. Sasuke x Naruto, yaoi (boyxboy)


**Summary: **Naruto is working his way through school as a therapeutic masseuse at a high end resort. In general, he loves his job. But there is one client of his that is making him re-think his employment there. Sasuke x Naruto, yaoi (boyxboy)

**Warning: Yaoi (Boy x Boy) **

**Author's note** - this is just something I started writing when I was bored and needed to take a break from my chapter stories. This doesn't fit into the 'lemonade' stand because there isn't a lemon in this. And if I continue it and add one, then it wouldn't be a oneshot. I am just posting this because I find myself re-reading it when I am feeling depressed or bored and I thought maybe other people might like to read it as well? Dunno... it's not like... a big full story or anything. But too long to be a drabble either. Just more like an idea that I like.

-xXx-

Most days, Naruto was happy with his life.

He had a purpose... a goal he was finally driving toward after finding his life briefly derailed. It wasn't world changing, but it was real, and tangible, and it took all his focus.

After a rocky childhood, things had started looking up when he had earned a swimming scholarship that would pay his way through college. When a freak rock climbing accident had put an end to his swimming career in his sophomore year, Naruto had wondered what would happen to him. Luckily his scholarship had carried over to the next year, with his swim coach being optimistic for his recovery. But a misdiagnosis early on that it was a dislocated shoulder rather than the torn rotator cuff that it was had put an end to his ability to swim competitively, with too much time out of the water to remain competitive.

His girlfriend had loved dating the star of the swim team, and when it became clear that those days were over for Naruto, so was their relationship. Surprisingly, he didn't miss her much. He'd had a few casual relationships since then, even one with a male art teacher, but nothing serious.

The experience with his injury and subsequent treatment issues had refocused him. He had been undecided even at the end of his sophomore year as to what he wanted to major in. So he had spent the time instead getting his general requirements out of the way. After his injury, he had become fascinated with the treatment of sports-related injuries. His scholarship had mandated that he keep his grades up, so his GPA was decent. Having a lot of extra time after he was no longer able to train with the swim team, Naruto had doubled down on his coursework and taken all the pre-med requirements. He wanted to work in an area that he had personal experience in, and hopefully do a better job that the idiot who had treated him and missed the clear indications that this was not a simple dislocation.

It was the first time in his life that he actually had a long-term goal. His godmother, who generally disapproved of most things he had done with his life to date, surprisingly decided to back him in this plan, and promised to pay half of his medical school tuition costs if he made it in.

So Naruto worked his ass off, graduating with honors and only having to take loans out to pay for one year of undergrad given that his swimming had paid for the first three.

He applied to medical schools and physical therapist programs, deciding he would go into sports medicine if he could get in, and physical therapy if he couldn't. He didn't make it into any of the very top medical schools, but he made it into a decent enough one and jumped at it.

Next fall he would start his first year of med school. And the bill would be staggering, even with his godmother picking up half the tab. His pre-med requirements covered off most of the course work he needed to apply for his physical therapist assistant's certification. He had started off working evenings and weekends in physical therapy, but quickly realized that he could earn much more money (and have more control over his hours) working in therapeutic massage at one of the many high end resorts and spas in the area.

Therapeutic massage was the current fad, and everyone from wealthy trophy wives to athletes to billionaire business tycoons were taking part.

The resort Naruto worked at charged $200 for an hour massage, and though they paid Naruto less than half of that, the tips were often almost as much as the massage itself so he easily made almost double what he had been making as a PTA.

Naruto enjoyed the staff that he worked with, though some were a bit eccentric. And he liked his clients for the most part, though many were pampered and spoiled. But they were interesting, and Naruto was careful not to follow-up on some of the more amorous advances of the bored housewives, but the offers did nice things to his ego.

His favorite clients were actually the athletes, professional or weekend warriors, who would come seeking additional relief from the intense physical rigors of their jobs. He liked them primarily for two reasons. The first was that he was able to learn a lot about which physical therapy techniques actually worked in practice and which didn't just by listening to their stories. He learned how the injuries occurred, how the pain and treatments altered over time, and what the general recovery process looked like. He also enjoyed these clients because, strictly from an aesthetics perspective, they were fun to work on. Male or female, Naruto had a great appreciation for the human form, the complexities that comprised it and the feats it was capable of with proper training.

Giving a massage to a serious athlete afforded Naruto an extra lesson in anatomy, following the muscles of each area of the body, the tendons that attached them to the bones beneath. He learned more here than he had in the extensive musculoskeletal classes he had taken. Despite the heavy workload, Naruto actually found his grades improving after he began his work here, because it made the concepts much easier to grasp when he could see them in practice.

Overall, Naruto liked his job.

Naruto glanced at the small clock he kept in the treatment room where he was working. 3:55 pm on Friday afternoon. Naruto felt the palms of his hands prickle with sweat. _He_ would be here in five minutes. Naruto drew a steadying breath, then blew it out in a self-effacing laugh. He was such a fool, every week feeling the anticipation and anxiety slowly build until he returned again.

Sasuke Uchiha. Naruto didn't really know much about him, except that the man was some sort of business executive. Naruto didn't follow the business world much, but if the man were able to pay for a weekly two hour session at the five-star resort where Naruto worked, then he must be doing well for himself. And though he wasn't a professional athlete, his physique spoke of hours in the gym with an extremely proficient physical trainer.

He felt his stomach twist in a giddy mixture of anxiety and anticipation. He looked around the room, ensuring it was in readiness with all the preferences of his client. For his regulars, Naruto always took the extra trouble of learning what their preferences were. Which scents to use for both oils and incense, if they preferred. Whether they liked to vent their own stories or listen to his idle chatter, or have soothing music instead. None of those were technically part of a therapeutic massage, but Naruto added them in to make the overall experience one of both physical and mental relaxation.

And his efforts had paid off, making him one of the most sought after masseurs in the spa. His tips alone were paying for his rent, food and books for the semester. Several of his clients had even offered to hire him away from the spa full time.

But Naruto liked working here, in general, seeing the mix of people and learning from his experiences. Plus he still wanted to finish school and have a career that actually mattered to him. So he always politely declined, though was sometimes willing to do an occasional house call or extra session on his days off in case of emergency.

Sasuke (and Naruto stumbled over using the man's first name even in his thoughts) had never requested such a thing, of course. He was a businessman, not an athlete, so his needs were more predictable. He tipped Naruto generously, but never commented outside of that on Naruto's skills or performance.

The door opened, and the object of Naruto's fixation walked in. He nodded to the blond in casual greeting, which Naruto returned with a smile.

"Mr. Uchiha. Nice to see you. I'll leave you to change," Naruto said, lighting the sandalwood incense that he had learned the man preferred, and starting the CD playing that had the sounds of rain and thunder.

As always, Sasuke never said anything nor smiled in return. He merely held Naruto's gaze with his black eyes, then nodded, already removing his suit jacket and working on the buttons of his shirt.

If you asked Naruto if the man were the best body he had ever seen, Naruto would answer honestly 'no'. There was a woman who was a professional tennis player that Naruto would have to say had better defined arms and back muscles. And there was a male soccer player who had legs and abs so solid and defined that they could use his body as the centerfold for his muscular anatomy class.

But whenever the tall, pale man walked in, Naruto felt his palms instantly break out in a sweat. He was glad for the fact that the massage oil that he used covered this fact, and that the amount of pressure he applied in his techniques disguised the shaking of his hands. Perhaps it was the intellectual intensity in those dark eyes. Or they way that his presence exuded control and authority. Naruto honestly didn't know where his intense fascination came from, but there was no denying its existence, no matter how hard Naruto tried to ignore it or will it away.

Naruto managed to exit the room without appearing to be fleeing, but that was exactly what he was doing. He closed the door softly behind him, and stood with his back braced against it, releasing a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding since the man's long fingers had slid the first button of his shirt free.

He knew this was inappropriate. Hell, if he found out that his doctor or physical therapist were having thoughts like this about him when they were examining him or treating him, he'd be furious (and in the case of his sixty-something general practitioner, pretty grossed out). If Sasuke knew the number of nights that Naruto had woken up sweaty and hard, remembering the feel of the smooth, pale skin over the hard muscles that he manipulated expertly beneath his hands, the man would likely have him fired.

It was unethical. Naruto had been struggling with it for some time, because if he were honest with himself he looked forward to the sessions with the man with an almost feverish intensity all week. But it was matched with an almost equally intense sense of guilt and self-loathing.

And beyond being unethical, it was also just straight-up ridiculous. Naruto had dated enough to know that relationships generally formed between people of similar levels of attractiveness. A 10 just did not date a 5, unless there was a lot of money involved on said 5's part. Now Naruto was well above a 5. He probably rated a solid 8 on the hotness scale, and potentially a 9 for people into his 'type'. Tan, blond hair and blue eyes, athletic build without being bulky. But a man like Sasuke was completely out of Naruto's league, and Naruto knew it. On a scale of 1 to 10, Sasuke probably rated at least a 30. And on top of it all, he apparently had money and 'prospects', whatever those were.

Now, Naruto had successfully gotten in to med school, so he might have had a little in terms of prospects as well. But at the moment, in terms of money, he was definitely in massive negative territory. And Sasuke seemed older and worldlier than Naruto's twenty-one.

The whole thing was just pathetically pointless.

At first, Naruto had been fine with it, just admiring from afar. Well, not exactly _afar_, since their entire interaction generally involved Naruto running his oil-slicked hands over Sasuke's naked body. But Naruto had thought he would simply be able to admire Sasuke in a detached way, as one would a fine work of art.

But over time, Naruto found himself comparing potential lovers against Sasuke's ridiculous perfection. And of course, no one even came close.

He thought back to his first meeting with the man, when he had taken over Karin's appointments when she was out with the flu.

_"So, you must work as a model, or an actor, right? Usually I have a pretty good sense of people, but I am having a hard time placing you. You seem too serious to be either of those, but with your looks it's hard to imagine you as someone working in some sort of regular job."_

_Sasuke quirked an eyebrow in annoyance. "I am not sure which option is worse. Either you are trying to hit on me and using an extremely overdone line, or you are serious and actually think this is an appropriate way to guess someone's career. I certainly hope your skills in massage are better than your ability in either of these."_

Naruto had later learned from Karin that Sasuke was just some sort of businessman, working in a 'regular' job, with the exception that he owned the company he worked at with his brother.

Karin was Sasuke's regular masseuse at the time, and Naruto had been glad that he wouldn't have to see the man again after making such an embarrassing comment. He had therefore been surprised (and a little nervous) to find out the following week that the man had specifically requested Naruto. Karin had been upset, because not only was Sasuke an excellent tipper, but he was serious eye candy as well. However, there was no going against a paying client's preferences, so they had both had to defer to the man's wishes.

And that's when Naruto's torture had begun.

Figuring that the man had had enough time to change, Naruto returned to the room to find Sasuke laying naked on the massage table. Most of Naruto's clients would be wrapped in a towel, or at least leave it laying across their ass. But Sasuke appeared to not be bothered by his nudity at all. Naruto imagined that Sasuke would never even consider with the sight of his toned glutes did to the poor masseuse who had to work on him. Karin had said that Sasuke had kept the towel with her (despite her offering to massage that area for him). This made Naruto felt even guiltier, because obviously the man trusted his _male_ masseuse to not be harboring lascivious thoughts about his person.

Naruto stifled a sigh. Well, it was just another way in which he was unworthy of the man laid out before him.

"Any particular aches or injuries you wanted to work on today, Mr. Uchiha?" Naruto asked as he always did.

"No," was the usual answer, as it was this week.

Naruto poured a liberal amount of sandalwood scented oil into his hands, which he had left warming while Sasuke got ready. He began with long strokes up the man's back on either side of his spine, using the heels of his hands to provide firm pressure but not at the deep tissue level. Having gotten familiar with the man's body over the past few months, Naruto knew that Sasuke carried his stress in his upper shoulders, and the fatigue of working long hours at a desk in his lower back.

Not for the first time, Naruto wished Sasuke were one of his many clients who enjoyed a steady flow of words during their session, so Naruto could have focused his mind on the weather, latest news or stories of recent adventures to distract himself. But the older man seemed to dislike idle chatter, and certainly wasn't one to volunteer much himself, so Naruto was forced to work in silence with nothing to focus on but the feel of the man beneath him.

"This week must have been stressful," Naruto said, feeling the accumulated tension in the muscles of the back. He lengthened his strokes to slide up over Sasuke's shoulders and down over the muscles of his upper arm, feeling a similar tension there as well.

"Hn," was the only response, signaling that today would not be one of the relatively rare days where Sasuke would prefer conversation. Obligingly, Naruto continued in relative silence, speaking only when needed.

Naruto continued the general strokes, working blood into the muscles he was about to begin working on and warming them up.

"Ok, I'm going to start increasing the pressure now," Naruto always warned his patients when this phase of the massage was about to start. For his regulars, he had learned how much pressure to apply to achieve the maximum results without driving them past their comfort zones in terms of pain. Sasuke liked it best when Naruto used all his strength, almost to the point of leaving bruises.

Naruto shifted to his thumbs, leaning over Sasuke for maximum leverage and driving them deep into the muscles on either side of Sasuke's spine, starting at the base of his spine and slowly working his way up.

Sasuke let out a soft groan as Naruto's fingers worked their magic. Some of the spots Naruto hit were pressure points that triggered the lungs, but the sound coming from Sasuke always made the skin on Naruto's neck break out in goose bumps. He didn't know if it was simply because the man was generally so reserved and quiet, but there was something about drawing these groans of pleasure from that deep baritone voice that always had Naruto almost coming out of his skin.

Giving himself over to the pleasure of the moment, Naruto spent the next hour working every muscle along Sasuke's back and upper arms, relishing in every vibration that sounded from the man's throat. Naruto certainly had clients that were more muscled than the businessman, but there was something about Sasuke's taut, sinewed body that Naruto was drawn to. There was both beauty and strength in the clean lines of his form, and Naruto wished not for the first time as his hands slid over the defined contours of Sasuke's back that he had the ability to sculpt. His hands had memorized every chiseled definition and indentation of the flesh beneath him, from the slight indentations in his lower back just above his taut ass, to the way that his trapezius and deltoid muscles stood out in hard relief whenever the man would shift beneath him.

Finishing his work on that part of his body, Naruto then turned his attention to Sasuke's arms. Picking up one of the now limp appendages, Naruto began slowly working down from the shoulder to another one of his favorite body parts of the man: his hands. While Naruto generally considered himself an ass man, and a back man, he found endless fascination with Sasuke's hands. The bones of the fingers were long, and the palms hard but smooth. Definitely not the hands of a man who did a lot of manual labor, but they weren't squishy and soft, either, like the hands of some of the pampered trophy wives he tended to. Naruto kneaded down the forearms, then slid his hands in a continuous motion all the way down to the tip of Sasuke's index finger, as though siphoning off the tension and stress. With some of his clients, he used words like that to get them to relax, but with Sasuke he simply remained silent.

Naruto was glad that the man's face was turned down on the massage table and unable to see his reaction as he moved on to the final phase of the massage: Sasuke's legs.

He took Sasuke's right foot, and slowly built up pressure into the arch and ball of the foot. Another low sound of pleasure escaped Sasuke's lips as a reward. Even the man's feet were attractive. In general, Naruto didn't have much to say about feet. At best they were just... there. But as with the rest of the man, Sasuke's feet were perfect. The bones of the toes regular and smooth, the nails clean and buffed to perfect squares. The skin was as pale and smooth as the rest of his body, with none of the unsightly calluses or corns that Naruto often encountered.

He worked up to the tapered ankle to the hard muscles of the calf. Sasuke hissed slightly when Naruto dug his thumbs a bit too hard behind the back of the knee. "Sorry," Naruto said immediately, easing up on the pressure.

"Hn," Sasuke replied.

Naruto repeated the same procedure on the other leg, again stopping at the knee.

Naruto took a slow breath to steady himself, hoping the sound would be either covered by the music or come across as a sign of fatigue. Anything other than the sound of Naruto trying to steady his surge of desire at the phase which was about to begin.

His hands were actually shaking now. He used the excuse of getting more oil to buy himself time, but really, it didn't help. Naruto closed his eyes as he slid his hands up and down the roughhewn thighs. He had been able to hold himself reasonably together when he had only massaged Sasuke's upper body. But then a few months ago, the man had extended the sessions to two hours and asked for his legs to be massaged as well. He had come back from an overseas business trip, and his legs were tired and cramped from the 21 hour trip. What had started out as a one-time thing had turned into a weekly ritual of simultaneous pleasure and torture for Naruto.

Naruto began using his thumbs to work Sasuke's toned thighs in earnest. He felt his own face flush as the heels of his hands pressed in and upward, just at the base of Sasuke's ass. He wanted to cup his hands around the hard flesh of Sasuke's ass, but he clenched his hands into fists instead and used his knuckles to massage the upper part of the back of Sasuke's thighs. He was glad that the man only ever had Naruto do his back, because at least then he could hide the worst of his reactions to it. Naruto would die of humiliation if Sasuke knew that he had actually been getting hard during these sessions.

He could see the muscles of Sasuke's lower back tense, and he wondered if he had pushed too hard. "Sorry," he said again. This time there was no response.

Forcing himself to breathe in through his nose and slowly out through his mouth, Naruto worked his hands back down Sasuke's thighs. He used less pressure than usual when his thumbs went into the more delicate skin between the pale thighs, and he was careful not to let his hands go up more than midway up the thigh, not wanting to embarrass himself further with another slip.

He saw the pale hips flex fractionally against the massage table, and he wondered if maybe he was going too light and the man were ticklish. Luckily, the timer went off, signaling the end of the two hour session. Naruto drew a clean towel over Sasuke's body as he waked to the sink to wash his hands. "Have a good weekend, Mr. Uchiha," Naruto said before closing the door to leave the man to shower and change in privacy.

Naruto stood outside the door, trying to not listen to the soft rustling sounds of the man standing up. He didn't want to think about what Sasuke would look standing naked, his skin sheened from the massage oil. He blew out a breath. This had to stop.

He walked down to the front desk to talk to his manager. He remembered Karin telling Naruto that Sasuke only ever came on Friday's, likely due to his work schedule. It would mean giving up some good money, but Naruto knew it was the right thing to do.

"Mr. Hatake?" Naruto asked hesitantly as the man was going over some inventory for the spa.

"Naruto! What can I do for one of my most popular employees today?"

_Just do it, already!_ Naruto chided himself. "I need to switch my shifts. Fridays won't be possible for me anymore. I'm pretty sure Karin wouldn't mind pulling a double on Fridays given it's one of our peak days. Can you slot me in the schedule somewhere else?"

Kakashi frowned. "Several of our Friday clients specifically request you. They won't be happy. Your course schedule already cuts into a lot of possible shifts. Is anything going on that you want to tell me about?"

"No, sir," Naruto said, looking down.

Kakashi sighed. "Ok. I'll see if Karin will swap her Sunday morning shift with your Friday afternoon."

Naruto nodded, then went back to the employee break room. He didn't want to be there when Sasuke came out or he might start second guessing himself.

. . . . .

Naruto watched Sasuke's elegant but masculine figure walk down the hallway to the reception area. Sasuke's assistant made his appointments, so it was unlikely he would find out about the schedule change until he arrived next week. Karin would be overjoyed to have Sasuke's patronage back.

And Naruto would be happy to be free of the guilt and anticipation that plagued him throughout the week. He poured himself a glass of water and checked his schedule. He had thirty minutes before his next appointment. He tried to forget about the fact that today was the last time he would likely see Sasuke Uchiha.

-xXx-

-xXx-


End file.
